Anne Rice
 Pandora
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  DEDICATED
  TO
  STAN, CHRISTOPHER AND MICHELE RICE
  TO
  SUZANNE SCOTT QUIROZ AND
  VICTORIA WILSON
  TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN PRESTON
  TO
  THE IRISH OF NEW ORLEANS
  WHO, IN THE 1850S,
  BUILT ON CONSTANCE STREET
  THE GREAT CHURCH OF ST. ALPHONSUS, 
  WHILE PASSING ON TO US
  THROUGH FAITH, ARCHITECTURE AND ART 
  A SPLENDID MONUMENT
  TO
  "THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE
  AND
  THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME"
  
  
  Of Mrs. Moore and the echo in the Marabar Caves:
  ...but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming 
at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur "Pathos, piety, 
courage - they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has 
value."
  E. M. FORSTER
  A Passage to India
  
  Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and 
tremble.
  The General Epistle of James
  2:19
  
  How ridiculous and what a stranger he is who is surprised at anything which happens in 
life.
  MARCUS AURELIUS
  Meditations
  
  Another part of our same belief is that many creatures will be damned; for example the 
angels who fell from heaven through pride, and are now fiends; and those men on earth who 
die apart from the Faith of Holy Church, namely, the heathen; and those, too, who are 
christened but live unchristian lives, and so die out of love - all these shall be 
condemned to hell everlastingly, as Holy Church teaches me to believe. This being so I 
thought it quite impossible that everything should turn out well, as our Lord was now 
showing me. But I had no answer to this revelation save this: "What is impossible to you 
is not impossible to me. I shall honour my word in every respect, and I will make 
everything turn out for the best." Thus was I taught by God's grace....
  JULIAN OF NORWICH
  Revelations of Divine Love
  
  
  I
  
  Not twenty minutes has passed since you left me here in the cafe, since I said No to 
your request, that I would never write out for you the story of my mortal life, how I 
became a vampire - how I came upon Marius only years after he had lost his human life.
  Now here I am with your notebook open, using one of the sharp pointed eternal ink pens 
you left me, delighted at the sensuous press of the black ink into the expensive and 
flawless white paper.
  Naturally, David, you would leave me something elegant, an inviting page. This notebook 
bound in dark varnished leather, is it not, tooled with a design of rich roses, 
thornless, yet leafy, a design that means only Design in the final analysis but bespeaks 
an authority. What is written beneath this heavy and handsome book cover will count, 
sayeth this cover.
  The thick pages are ruled in light blue - you are practical, so thoughtful, and you 
probably know I almost never put pen to paper to write anything at all.
  Even the sound of the pen has its allure, the sharp
  scratch rather like the finest quills in ancient Rome when I would put them to 
parchment to write my letters to my Father, when I would write in a diary my own 
laments... ah, that sound. The only thing missing here is the smell of ink, but we have 
the fine plastic pen which will not run out for volumes, making as fine and deep a black 
mark as I choose to make.
  I am thinking about your request in writing. You see you will get something from me. I 
find myself yielding to it, almost as one of our human victims yields to us, discovering 
perhaps as the rain continues to fall outside, as the cafe continues with its noisy 
chatter, to think that this might not be the agony I presumed - reaching back over the 
two thousand years - but almost a pleasure, like the act of drinking blood itself.
  I reach now for a victim who is not easy for me to overcome: my own past. Perhaps this 
victim will flee from me with a speed that equals my own. Whatever, I seek now a victim 
that I have never faced. And there is the thrill of the hunt in it, what the modern world 
calls investigation.
  Why else would I see those times so vividly now? You had no magic potion to give me to 
loosen my thoughts. There is but one potion for us and it is blood.
  You said at one point as we walked towards the cafe, "You will remember everything."
  You, who are so young amongst us yet were so old as a mortal, and such a scholar as a 
mortal. Perhaps it
  is natural that you so boldly attempt to collect our stories.
  But why seek to explain here such curiosity as yours, such bravery in face of 
blood-drenched truth?